A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity From the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century

by Edmund Taylor Whittaker

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Genres: Physics, Science, History, History Of Science

498 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

1873-

Reviews

[Manny]

There are a couple of interesting pages about this book in the Born-Einstein letters, which I read last week. Born writes an exasperated letter to Einstein, saying that he's spent a lot of time talking with his colleague Whittaker about it and giving him all kinds of advice and practical help, including translating some lengthy papers from German. Born's main goal is to persuade Whittaker that his account of the development of special relativity is completely wrong: it was developed by Einstein, not, as Whittaker thinks, by Poincaré and Lorentz. But his efforts are all in vain, and Whitaker sticks to his story in the published work.

I found this extraordinary, since Born had known Lorentz well and was a scrupulously honest person. When he said that Lorentz only very late, and very reluctantly, came to accept the idea of relativity, Whittaker should have believed him. If anything, Born adds in a later comment written in the 60s, he was giving Lorentz the benefit of the doubt: it wasn't clear that Lorentz ever really did think relativity was correct.

At the time of writing the letter, Born is worried that Whittaker, who then is highly respected, will cause major trouble and confuse the historical account. Einstein replies that he doesn't give a fuck, though he expresses this in a characteristically polite and witty way. He turns out to have called it better than Born did, since Whittaker's book is now thoroughly forgotten.